37 – Knowing God’s Heart

So often, we get it into our heads that when we accept Christ and set about following God, life will be not just better—which it is—but easier—which it often is not. In fact, when we seek God’s heart and determine to embrace it in our thoughts, actions, and writing, we may end up in the deepest places we’ve ever known. But don’t be afraid! Our wonderful guest, best-selling author and mother of TEN, Tricia Goyer, will help you see how it’s in those places that we find God’s true power and the message He has for us to share with a broken and weary world.

Show Notes

About Tricia Goyer:

Tricia Goyer is a busy mom of ten—eight living at home—grandmother of three, and wife to John. Somewhere around the hustle and bustle of family life, she manages to find the time to write fictional tales delighting and entertaining readers and non-fiction titles offering encouragement and hope. A bestselling author, Tricia has published more than fifty books to date and has written more than 500 articles. She is a two-time Carol Award winner, as well as a Christy and ECPA Award nominee. In 2010, she was selected as one of the Top 20 Moms to Follow on Twitter by SheKnows.com. Tricia is also on the blogging team at TheBetterMom.com and other homeschooling and Christian sites. In addition to her roles as mom, wife, and author, Tricia volunteers around her community and mentors teen moms. She is the founder of Hope Pregnancy Ministries in Northwestern Montana, and she currently leads a Teen MOPS Group in Little Rock, AR. Learn more about Tricia at www.triciagoyer.com.

Tricia Goyer is a busy mom and writer in the trenches. Today she talks with us about knowing God’s heart…

Key Quotes:

Tricia’s thoughts of the deep…

“I love that you brought God’s word into it. I think in my story it has been getting to know God’s word, really spending time with Him, but then actually doing what it says. So when God says care for the widows, care for the orphans, tell the gospel to those in need, it’s actually doing what He says. When I do that, that’s where the deep trouble comes… but then having Him show up again and again and again.”

 

Deep struggles in our lives…

“The deep for me was all those places I tried to hide, all the pain that had been there. God not only wanted to heal those places but He wanted to use me to reach other people. Somehow all the pain that I went through…it even comes out in my writing…in a lot of the issues my characters have. So not only face-to-face, but even in my writing God has wanted to use those things that I wanted to hide to help other people.”

 

Struggles while we’re being obedient…

“The most recent struggle has been adopting our kids. John and I have three biological kids and then we’ve adopted seven more kids in the last five years…and my 87-year-old grandma also lives with us, so add that to the mix…We started with adopting one because we felt we’ve got to care for these orphans… and we got a newborn baby and we thought, okay we’ve done what God’s word says… But then John and I were confronted with the thought that there are a lot more kids that need homes, that are in foster care, that are aging out of foster care… Most teenagers that age out of foster care, the girls are pregnant within six months…Statistics are that 90% of the boys are incarcerated after they age out of foster care because they have no family. They have nowhere to turn. They end up going to the streets… We were just confronted…so then we got these kids that were so broken…that had emotional issues. They’ve been abused, they’ve been sexually assaulted,